HELL IS TOO CROWDED by Harry Patterson (Jack Higgins)

Hell is too Crowded is the fifth novel published by Harry Patterson.  It was released as a hardcover by John Long in 1962, and it is the most mature—both stylistically and thematically—of Mr Patterson’s earliest novels.

Matthew Brady is an American structural engineer who is in London after completing a job in Kuwait.  In the early morning hours Brady is on the tail end of a two day jag when a frightened young woman named Marie Duclos stumbles out of the fog.  Marie is returning home from a party, and she tells Brady a man is following her.

Brady accompanies the young woman to her Chelsea flat where everything changes.  He passed out on the couch, and his next conscious moment is the police questioning him for the murder of Marie.  The rest of the novel is Brady’s attempt to discover who framed him for the murder, and why.

Hell is too Crowded is a brilliantly plotted novel with a depth of setting and atmosphere not previously accomplished by Harry Patterson.  The storyline—at least the hook—is similar to David Goodis’ Dark Passage, but the execution is purely Jack Higgins’ adventure.  Matthew Brady is a man apart—he is completely isolated from the world around him, and the setting and atmosphere denote this isolation from the first moment.  The fog, the near emptiness of the river, and the sound of a ship’s foghorn combine to create an uneasy tension of separation, which is the underlying theme of the novel—

“A ship moved down the Pool of London sounding its foghorn like the last of the dinosaurs lumbering aimlessly through a primeval swamp, alone in a world that was already alien.”

The plotline is straightforward, but it is developed seamlessly; one scene effortlessly leads to the next, and Mr Patterson doles out clues timely, but with an unhurried pace.  The first clue is in the first paragraph, but it isn’t realized until the last pages of the novel. 

Hell is too Crowded is very nearly a perfect thriller.  It is a mixture of noir and adventure, and is written in Mr Patterson’s unique, almost lyrical, prose—

“There was a taste of fog in the air, that typical London fog that drifts up from the Thames, yellow and menacing, wrapping the city in its shroud.”

There are also a few interesting slang terms in the novel, including “grass,” which basically means snitch, and “doss,” which means easy.  There is also a solid joke in the narrative—if you know Harry Patterson was a school teacher—when an homely assistant to one of the villains, a Hindu Priest named Das, is described as “a school mistress.”

Thrift Shop Book Covers: Berserker Man

Berserker Man is the third Berserker novel (and fourth book) by Fred Saberhagen.  Its debut was a fashionable paperback original by ACE in 1979, which is the exact edition that caught my eye.  The artwork is a Boris Vallejo original, and it is a perfect 1970s science fiction cover.  The colors are vivid (yet somehow muted all the same) with a stark contrast between light and dark.  And, amazingly, it is an image I can look at again and again and see something new; a flash of coral, a uranium splash, an oxidized reflection of fire.

The Berserker stories have been going strong since the 1960s, and even today have a cult following.  A Berserker is a self-replicating war machine, which was design to destroy life.  The name “berserker” was borrowed from Norse legend.  It is defined (in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary) as—

“[A]n ancient Scandanavian warrior frenzied in battle and held to be invulnerable.”

The opening paragraph:

“Well, Elly Temesvar thought grayly, we’ve given it a good fight, done better than anyone might have expected, considering how little ship we have to fight it with.”

 

This is the second in a new series of posts featuring the cover art and miscellany of books I find at thrift stores and used bookshops.  It is reserved for books I purchased as much for the cover art as for the story or author. 

THE GUNS OF NAVARONE by Alistair MacLean

Alistair MacLean is a legend of the adventure novel.  His work, especially his first several novels, is the standard all other adventure novels are measured.  And it is a large and uncomfortable fit for nearly every novel and writer in the genre.  Much of his best work is about the daring exploits of men at war, which is interesting because Mr MacLean held antiwar viewpoints.  In an essay he wrote for Companion Book Club, which is included as an introduction to recent editions of his novel The Guns of Navarone, he stated—

“I wanted to write a war story—with the accent on the story.  Only a fool would pretend that there is anything noble or splendid about modern warfare, but there is no denying that it provides a great abundance of material for a writer, provided no attempt is made to glorify it or exploit its worst aspects.”

I have also read Mr MacLean was disappointed in the Where Eagles Dare film, which he developed as a screenplay before writing the novel.  In Chris Willis’s biographical essay for its Alistair MacLean entry in British Mystery and Thriller Writers Since 1960, Ian Chapman, MacLean’s editor at Collins, quoted Mr MacLean’s reaction to Where Eagles Dare—

“This is terrible!  I didn’t kill as many Germans as this.  I was writing an antiwar film.”

I can only imagine a wry smile, or a half chuckle when Mr MacLean said those words because as a fan of both the film and the novel I can’t possibly see the “anti” part of the war story, but it has been some years since I read the novel; maybe I missed something?

I bring all this up because I recently reread Alistair MacLean’s second novel The Guns of Navarone, and it, somehow, was better than I remembered.  Which is impressive because I remember it being pretty damn good.  Navarone is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea where the Germans built a nearly impervious artillery emplacement deep in its stone cliffs.  The Allies have made every attempt to destroy the guns because with them in place the Germans’ control the passage to the small British held island Kheros where some 1,200 soldiers are stranded.

In a last ditch effort British Intelligence creates a strike force composed of five men.  The men are tasked to infiltrate Navarone and destroy the guns before the Royal Navy attempts its rescue of the men on Kheros.  If they fail, the naval ships will be destroyed by the guns, and the soldiers on Kheros will be captured, or worse.

The Guns of Navarone is a larger than life war story painted on a small canvas; the action is limited to a single objective with extraordinarily fine plotting, and the perspective is limited to the eyes of the strike force.  The plot and action live up to the old writing adage, “Get your protagonist up a tree.  Throw rocks at him.  Then get him down.”  In this case, the tree is Navarone, and the rocks are more boulders than stones because anything that can go wrong does—from wild weather to an expectant well-trained German occupation force and a nearly impenetrable fortress of stone protecting the guns. 

The action is compressed into four wildly eventful days.  The men are dispatched to Navarone on a dilapidated Greek fishing boat, which miraculously not only gets to the destination, but makes it through a heavy storm and a German patrol boat.  Once on the island it takes everything, including some luck, for the team to reach its destination.  The team is comprised of five men who, save two, have never met or worked together before the mission.  The core of the team is comprised of three men—Keith Mallory, the leader and famous mountaineer before the war, Andrea, a former Colonel in the Greek army, and Dusty Miller, a smart-aleck American who spends a great deal of his time trying to escape duty. 

The characters are built for the story, but there are surprising moments of something more.  One of the men, a young mountaineer named Andy Stevens is driven by fear.  The turmoil he creates, and endures, is quite powerful.  His true fear is the men around him will know he is a coward, and he will do anything to keep his secret.  The characters, for the most part, are simple designs of superhuman composites; Andrea is a killing machine, Miller is the humorist, and Mallory is the responsible leader who thinks his way through trouble.  Interestingly, like much of Mr MacLean’s early novels, there is not a female to be found.

The Guns of Navarone was originally published in 1957 and it is as exciting and relevant today as it was when it was released.  It is a representation of the best of Alistair MacLean’s work.  The plot is tight and tricky—in a good way with both betrayal and surprise—and believable in that over the top manner MacLean was able to do so well.

Veronica Mars - Movie Trailer

It’s official.  Veronica Mars the movie is scheduled for release March 14, 2014.  It looks like it is old school as far as the cast—all the usual suspects show up in the trailer, including Mac, Dick, Logan, Keith (Dad), and Wallace. 

Thrift Shop Book Covers: The Freedom Trap



The Freedom Trap is the eighth novel published by Desmond Bagley.  Its United States debut was a hardcover published by Doubleday in 1971, but it is the Fawcett Crest paperback edition that caught my eye.  The cover art has everything an adventure novel should—a frogman, a bikini clad beauty, an exploding boat in the background, and the tide breaking onshore.  The artist, as far as I know, is unknown, but it is a fine example of a 1970s Fawcett paperback.

The novel itself is pure adventure.  Reardon is a high class criminal who is hired by a man named Mackintosh for a simple job—knock over a postman delivering a shipment of uncut diamonds and hand them over to Mackintosh and get paid.  But like everything, nothing is as simple as it seems and Reardon finds himself in prison serving 20 years.  And all this in only the first 38 pages; and it astonishingly gets better.

It is widely believed The Freedom Trap was inspired by Soviet spy—or more accurately British double agent—George Blake’s October 22, 1966 escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison.  He was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 42 years in 1961.  The plot is similar to Jack Higgins’ 1967 Paul Chavasse novel The Dark Side of the Street, which was also likely influenced heavily by the George Blake story (due to the timing of its release) and is an excellent adventure novel in its own right.       

The opening paragraph:

“Mackintosh’s office was, unexpectedly, in the City.  I had difficulty in finding it because it was in that warren of streets between Holborn and Fleet Street, which is a maze to one accustomed to the grid-iron pattern of Johannesburg.  I found it at last in a dingy building; a well-worn brass plate announcing innocuously that this Dickensian structure held the registered office of Anglo-Saxon Holdings, Ltd.”        

The Freedom Trap was translated to film as “The Mackintosh Man” starring Paul Newman as Reardon.  The plot, and it has been several years since I have seen it, follows the novel quite closely.  It was directed by John Huston and written for the screen by Walter Hill.

Although for all excitement, action and even history of the novel, it is the cover on that 1973 Fawcett Crest paperback (M1789) that made me pick it up in the first place.  It’s a shame these lurid covers and well told stories are relics limited to thrift shops and forgotten used books stores. 

This is the first of a new series of posts featuring the cover art and miscellany of books I find at thrift stores and used bookshops.  It is reserved for books I purchased as much for the cover art as the story or author.  

2013 -- The Year In Reading

2013 marked my reentry to consistent blogging, and it was also my most productive year as a reader in the past five or six.  To date I have finished 53 books (and I will probably finish another 2 or 3); the majority were novels, but the total includes a tolerable number of nonfiction works, too.  The nonfiction tended towards history, which included a number of interesting titles including Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer and Manhunt by Peter Maas.

The year also marked a return to a genre I enjoyed (loved?) as a boy—adventure.  Specifically the British writers of the 1960s and 70s featuring such stars as Alistair MacLean, Desmond Bagley, and Jack Higgins.  This said, I didn’t read many “new” authors, but mostly stayed with the old reliables.  In fact, I only increased my fiction writers read by five—Craig Thomas (Wolfsbane), Alfred Coppel (The Eight Day of the Week), Shepard Rifkin (The Murderer Vine), A. Bertram Chandler (Star Courier), and Billie Sue Mosiman (Wireman).

What I lacked in new writers I made up for in my long time favorites.  A full fifteen of the novels I read, or approximately 28 percent of my total reading, was limited to four writers.  I read or reread six titles by Jack Higgins, and three titles each by Jack M. Bickham, Ed Gorman, and Bill Pronzini.  And I really enjoyed every one of the novels by each of my most frequently read writers of 2013.

In the old days of this blog I put together a listing of my favorite five books read for the year, and I decided it would be fun to do it again this year.  It was difficult to pare the list to five, and there were three or four that were cut from the list by a less than scientific methods.  With that said, my five favorite novels read in 2013 are—

5.  The Name of the Game is Death by Dan J. Marlowe.  This is the first title to feature Marlowe’s recurring character Earl Drake, and it is a real piece of hardboiled candy.  It was originally published by Gold Medal in 1962, and earlier this year it was released with its sister novel The Endless Hour in a nifty trade paperback by the never disappointing Stark House Press.  Read the Gravetapping review.

4.  Dark Passage by David Goodis.  This is Goodis’ most well-known novel.  It is dark, a little twisted, and a bunch of fun.  It was originally published in 1946, and it has been reissued a number of times. It is currently available in an omnibus hardcover edition by The Library of America, which includes four other Goodis titles.  Interestingly, the plot is similar to the television show “The Fugitive” and United Artists Television settled a copyright lawsuit with Goodis’ estate.

3.  The Beardless Warriors by Richard Matheson.  I was reading this title for the first time when Richard Matheson passed earlier this year, and it is a truly masterful piece of storytelling.  It is the story of a young man ordered to the frontlines as a replacement soldier during the Battle of the Bulge in Europe.  He is transformed from a green recruit to a seasoned combat soldier in a matter of days, and what frightens him and the reader alike is how easily he takes to killing.  This is a masterpiece by one of the most consequential authors of his generation.

2.  Fire in the Hole by Elmore Leonard.  This is a collection of short stories written by Mr Leonard.  The title is from the story the television series “Justified” is based, and amazingly the pilot for the television series and the story are almost identical.  I devoured this collection in little more than one sitting, and as I read it my main thought—nobody writes like Elmore Leonard. 

1.  The Murderer Vine by Shepard Rifkin.  When I sat down to compile the best of list there was no doubt what the number one would be.  It is a perfectly executed crime novel, and an even better piece of civil rights literature.  Read the Gravetapping review.

DRAGON GAMES by Stephen Mertz



2008. Beijing, China. The world has descended on China for one of the most spectacular public relations campaigns in modern history.  The Summer Olympics mark China’s celebration, and notice to the world, that it has arrived as a major world power, and it is of the utmost importance nothing go wrong.  A small group of private foreign security agents are hired to help protect the influx of both Western athletes and tourists.

The novel begins with the opening ceremonies in the behemoth stadium coined “the bird’s nest” with an unexpected and very violent operation involving both the private security firm and Chinese Special Forces.  A group of what the Chinese believe to be terrorists are captured in the delivery access area of the stadium.  It is a quick and violent operation that isn’t noticed by anyone, including the media, but leads the protagonist, Tag McCall, into a dark and dangerous mission that will cost him more than he can fathom.

Dragon Games is a throwback in the thriller racket.  It is more adventure and less bombast.  The writing is tight and literate, and the plot is streamlined into an action packed story that is more believable, and therefore more suspenseful, than the common variety 21st Century thriller.

The prose is strong and shifts from a rich and almost poetic cadence to a stark and pounding hardboiled style that is reminiscent of the suspense novels of the 1970s and 80s.  It is, however, not a rehash of anything old or new.  The story is original and the style is all Stephen Mertz.  It is a modern adventure novel that it is better than most in its category.

The characters, particularly the hero, are built around the story, but they have a certain reality that gives them a flesh and blood feel.  They have families, love, hate, hope and even dreams.  Their back stories are sprinkled throughout the novel with a sparseness that allows the reader to relate to the characters without slowing the pace of the plot.

Dragon Games is the best of Stephen Mertz’s novels.  The narrative is strong, the characters are vivid and bold, and the story is exotic, enticing, and damn fun.  There are brief touches of understated humor mixed with ratcheting tension and action, and richly detailed and interesting descriptions of Beijing, the Olympics and the Chinese people. Mr Mertz has written a novel that is worthy of the first tier of suspense and action novels.

COMES THE DARK STRANGER by Harry Patterson (Jack Higgins)

Comes the Dark Stranger is the fourth novel published by Harry Patterson.  It was released as a hardcover by John Long in 1962.  It is an anomaly in Mr Patterson’s body of work because it is less adventure and more noir than anything else he wrote.

Martin Shane came to Burnham to kill a man.  Eight years earlier he and five other volunteered for Korea in Burnham, and were later captured by the Chinese.  They were questioned and tortured by a slight, club-footed Chinese officer named Colonel Li.  The men were captive for only a few days, but it was long enough for one of the men to be summarily executed and another to give Colonel Li what he wanted.  And Shane came back to Burnham because he needs to know who spilled to Colonel Li, and punish him with his life.

Comes a Dark Stranger is an interesting study of cold war paranoia.  Martin Shane received a severe head wound in Korea when American bombers raided the monastery where he was held captive, which took his memory for seven long years.  The seven years between the last day at the monastery and a few weeks before the story begins are a blank, and the war is fresh on his mind.  The cast of characters is straight from a 1950s film noir—a deformed millionaire, a shifty nightclub owner, a sweet but worldly club girl, a drunk and his bitter greedy wife, and the mandatory seemingly honest middle class lady.

The prose is an interesting mixture of Mr Patterson’s normal, almost lyrical prose, and a more straight forward dark, shadowy prose.  An example of the former is the opening lines—

“He was drowning in a dark pool.  The hands of the damned were pulling him down, but he kicked and struggled and fought his way to the surface.”

And an example from the later—

“There was a narrow, dark opening in the opposite wall, and he crossed the street and plunged into it as the car flashed back.”

The deep shadows and stark flesh of an urban underbelly is palpable in much of the prose, and as I read the novel I was reminded of the shadowy lighted films popular in the era heavy with paranoia, betrayal, and fear.  The paranoia is central to the plot and the throughout the novel Shane hears the scrape and slide sound of Colonel Li walking.  It is a sound he hasn’t heard since the Korea, but it is a sound that literally represents the narrow edge between sanity and madness.

Comes the Dark Stranger is different than most of Mr Patterson’s novels, and while it seems rushed in spots and a tad over plotted, it is an entertaining diversion.  Its atmosphere and tone is rich, and Martin Shane is an engaging protagonist—if seemingly unreliable much of the time—who the reader easily identifies.  But the most interesting element of the novel is its experimental nature.  Not experimental in the macro sense, but rather in the micro sense—i. e. Mr Patterson’s own body of work.   

There is an interesting correlation between Harry Patterson and Martin Shane.  Shane regained his memory when he fell and the shrapnel lodged in his brain shifted.  Harry Patterson was diagnosed with something called essential tremor syndrome in his early seventies, which is a neurological disease that caused shaking so severe he was unable to hold a pen.  He suffered a seizure at a friend’s house, fell and struck his head, and the tremors stopped nearly instantly.  In an interview with Reuters Mr Patterson said, “In a way it is a bit like Lazarus.  It has been a blessing late in life—this unprecedented cure.”

STAR COURIER by A. Bertram Chandler

John Grimes is the Owner-Master of the deep space pinnace Little Sister.  Little Sister is a modified solid gold hulled ship, which was given to Mr Grimes by his former employer Michelle, Baroness d’Estrang, of El Dorado “in lieu of back pay and separation pay.”  A pinnace is a light sailing ship used as a tender for a larger ship, but Little Sister is fully equipped and capable of autonomous galactic space transit.

Grimes is recently unemployed and finds himself on Tiralbin looking for a mail contract.  The Interstellar Transport Commission has the mail contract for Tiralbin, but it is notoriously slow for the smaller provincial planets off the main trade routes—

“Grimes recalled especially a parcel that his colleague had torn open with great indignation.  According to the postmark it had taken just over a year to reach Lindisfarne Base.  It contained a not readily identifiable mass that looked as though it would have been of interest only to a geologist.  It was, in fact, a birthday cake that had been baked by the disgruntled lieutenant’s fiancée.”

Grimes is on planet for only a few hours when a cargo to the small wealthy planet Boggarty is offered.  The cargo is a rush consignment with one hitch: the Superinteding Postmistress Tamara Haverstock must accompany the cargo.  The expected pleasantries happens between Grimes and the postmistress until Little Sister’s inertial drive breaks down, and they are boarded by the Shaara, a very advanced bee species.

Star Courier is a simple, straight forward space adventure.  It is simple, but the sheer amount of action is extraordinary—Grimes moves from budding entrepreneur to casa nova to prisoner to conquering diety.  In short, the story is large, but it is played out on the ground and kept not only manageable by Mr Chandler, but also entertaining.  The prose is simple, crisp, and very readable.  It perfectly matches the story style, and creates a certain low level buzz of tension by pushing the narrative forward quickly and without any overwrought dramatics.

Star Courier is very unlike most of the science fiction currently being published.  It is short, full of adventure, and includes very little—no?—philosophy.  It is something very close to what Ace was publishing in the 1960s and 1970s, and if you enjoy the older science fiction—or maybe it is better described as space adventure—than you will have a great time with this one.

Interestingly, I found a quote from Mr Chandler regarding his work in his entry in Contemporary Authors Online—

“I write science fiction because I like it.  More than one unkind editor has commented that my stories are ‘costume sea stories.’”     

Star Courier felt very much like a sea story; from the use of the term “pinnace” to describe Little Sister, to landing procedures in port, to the use of mainline trading routes.  However space travel is inherently comparable with sea travel due to the long distances involved and the solitary self-sustained journeys.     

Star Courier was originally published by DAW in 1977, and it is currently available as both an ebook and in an omnibus print edition (both trade and mass market) titled Galactic Courier: The John Grimes Saga III, which also includes To Keep the Ship, Matilda’s Stepchildren, and Star Loot.

Don Pendleton's Joe Copp Novels

Don Pendleton is best known for his men’s adventure series The Executioner.  He created it and wrote, more or less, the first 38 titles in the series before he handed it off to Gold Eagle books and a host of ghost writers.  Mr Pendleton’s later work never found the same success as The Executioner, but he wrote a series of private detective novels featuring an ex-cop tough guy named Joe Copp.

Copp appeared in six novels between 1987 and 1992.  They were published in hardcover by Donald I. Fine, and paperback (except the first) by Harper.  There is something almost juvenile about the stories—black and white themes, hard as nails action, and prose as hard as Mickey Spillane—but the stories are vivid, exciting, and very entertaining. 

Below is a listing of the books in chronological order with the cover scans of the original hardcover and paperback editions of each title, excepting Copp in Deep, which I was unable to find a scan for the hardcover.    

Copp for Hire.  Published by Donald I. Fine in 1987 as a hardcover, and reprinted in mass market by Lynx Books in 1988.

 

Copp on Fire.  Published by Donald I. Fine in 1988 as a hardcover, and reprinted in mass market by Harper Paperbacks in 1989.  Read the Gravetapping review.

Copp in Deep.  Published by Donald I. Fine in 1989 as a hardcover, and reprinted in mass market by Harper Paperbacks in 1990.  If anyone has a scan of the hardcover I would be much obliged for a copy.

Copp in the Dark.  Published by Donald I. Fine in 1990 as a hardcover, and reprinted in mass market by Harper Paperbacks in 1991.

 

Copp on Ice.  Published by Donald I. Fine in 1991 as a hardcover, and reprinted in mass market by Harper Paperbacks in 1992.

 

Copp in Shock.  Published by Donald I. Fine in 1992 as a hardcover, and reprinted in mass market by Harper Paperbacks in 1993.

THE CASTRO DIRECTIVE by Stephen Mertz

Stephen Mertz is an unheralded, and much undervalued, writer of action and suspense novels.  He has steadily put together an impressive body of work since the late 1970s.  He was one of the original writers of the post-Don Pendleton, The Executioner series, and he created a few of his own successful men’s adventure series in the 1980s, including M. I. A. Hunter and Cody’s War.  But the meat of his work is what he has produced over the last decade starting with Night Wind, and including the excellent novels The Korean Intercept, Dragon Games, and Hank & Muddy.

I read his most recent novel The Castro Directive in close to a single sitting.  It is a straight action thriller with a dollop of intrigue, and a touch of betrayal.  The year is 1961.  The CIA sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba is in its final phase and a high level leak is passing information about the invasion to the Castro government.  When a CIA man is killed on a deserted Cuban beach the Kennedy administration brings in a troubleshooter named Michael “Graveyard” Morgan.  Graveyard is a Green Beret sergeant stationed in Vietnam as an advisor, and he is a man who gets the job done.

Morgan’s job is to find the mole.  It takes him from the streets of Miami to Nicaragua to Cuba, and back again.  There is an interesting sub plot involving Graveyard’s daughter and wife, and the cast of characters includes President Kennedy.  The JFK described is long on intelligence, but short on marital fidelity.  One of my favorite presidential scenes has Kennedy reading a James Bond novel poolside. 

The Castro Directive’s plot is straight forward, but with a few well timed and satisfying surprises.  The prose is stark and, in places, quite vivid— 

“The only sound for the past ten minutes had been the lapping of gentle swells against the low, black-painted hull.  The V-20 speedboat rode the swells one hundred yards offshore.  Sleek, sixty-three-feet in length, the launch bore no name or markings.”   

Graveyard is an action hero from the old school.  He is tough, single minded, and willing to do, and risk, anything to get the job done.  The added element of his family, which Mr Mertz ties into the story admirably, adds a little meat to the bone and makes the story more interesting.  The real charm of The Castro Directive is the setting—1960’s South Florida, especially—and the straight forward action, which is a specialty of Mr Mertz. 

The Castro Directive may be Stephen Mertz’s best novel to date—and each is seemingly better than the last—but even if it isn’t his best, it is damn enjoyable anyway.

DEAD RECKONING by Sam Llewellyn

Sam Llewellyn is an author I discovered in the late 1980s as a teenager.  He wrote a series of suspense novels set in the British fishing village of Pulteney.  The novels all have sailing as a backdrop, and by my recollection none of them feature the same protagonist.

I recently reread Dead Reckoning, which is the first of the Pulteney sailing novels published in 1987.  It is narrated by Charlie Agutter.  Charlie is from an old Pulteney family, and he makes his living designing racing yachts.  The novel opens with Charlie receiving a summons to the village’s lifeboat.  A sailing yacht has been caught in The Teeth—a dangerous stretch of reef just off shore.  The stranded yacht was designed by Charlie, and is one of only two produced with a new light weight rudder, but even worse the dead sailor at its helm is his brother.

It appears the rudder failed and a heavy sea dragged Aesthete into the Teeth where its hull was cracked like an egg.  The accident hits Charlie hard.  He and his younger brother were close and his business is threatened with collapse due to the perceived failure of the new rudder.  Charlie is certain the rudder was sabotaged, but the saboteur is a step ahead and he can’t prove it.  The mystery is as much motive as whodunit.  Charlie isn’t sure why the rudder was tampered with, and if it was murder for its own sake—to kill his brother or the other man aboard the yacht—or an attempt to destroy him and his business by undermining the rudder design.

Dead Reckoning is a wonderful suspense-adventure mystery.  It was fairly (and correctly) compared to the work of Dick Francis by critics when it was released.  A slim line suspense mystery with a sport setting.  In this case yacht racing, but it is as much an adventure story as mystery, and it is seemingly influenced by the Alistair MacLean style adventure thriller.  It is heavy on description, setting (weather is always an adversary), action and suspense, and light on dialogue and whodunit ponderings.

Pulteney is a perfect setting for the story.  It is a boom town that was once a place where fishermen made their living from the sea, but it has been bought up by wealthy professionals and industrialists who use it as a place to moor yachts and brag about to their friends back in the city.  The rub between the old and new residents creates its own tension as Charlie works to solve the puzzle and catch the killer.  He walks a tenuous line between both old and new, and isn’t quite trusted by either. 

Everything works in Dead Reckoning, but what sets it apart from its peers is the seamless weaving of both the culture and sport of yacht racing.  The plot cannot be extricated from its background, and one without the other would be completely useless.  The setting is exotic and familiar at once, and the characters are smoothly realistic in shades of both likability and familiarity.   

Dead Reckoning was published more than 25 years ago, but it has held up remarkably well, and Sam Llewellyn is back on my list of favorite writers.

CAMP FORD by Johnny D. Boggs

Win MacNaughton is an aging—99 years old—former baseball player, umpire, and coach who is invited to attend the 1946 World Series by The Sporting News.  A reporter asks him how he thinks the two participating teams—Red Sox and Cardinals—compare to the best team he has ever seen.  Win doesn’t hesitate, and quickly names two teams.

“‘Easy’ I said. “Mr. Lincoln’s Hirelings and the Ford City Gallinippers. Played one game at Camp Ford, Texas.”

The reporter gave Win a confused look and walked away.  He didn’t mention either of the teams in the newspaper the next day, and Win MacNaughton spends the rest of Johnny D. Boggs’ Camp Ford explaining his answer.  He begins his story as a boy in Rhode Island where he is introduced to the game that shaped his life.  His move with his parents to Jacksboro, Texas, where his father gets involved with the anti-slavery movement and, when the Civil War breaks out, his parents take him back North where, in 1863 he joins the 3rd Rhode Island Cavalry.

It isn’t long before Win finds himself a prisoner of war at Camp Ford, Texas where life is hard, cruel, and, surprisingly, filled with baseball—even the Southerners are learning the game.

Camp Ford won the Spur Award for best novel in 2005, and it is the best Western novel I have read in a long time.  Mr. Boggs adroitly weaves two storylines—the aged Win MacNaughton watching the 1946 World Series in St. Louis, and Win MacNaughton as a boy growing up in a changing and violent time with the new game of baseball.  The prisoner of war scenes are harsh and realistic with vivid descriptions of the place, the characters, and, most importantly, the inner thoughts of MacNaughton as he tries to survive captivity.

The characters are richly created and populate the novel with a sincerity and richness often lacking in this genre, or any other.  The ideals of friendship, love, and hate are explored, and Mr Boggs leaves just enough ambiguity in the narrative to allow the reader to judge the actions of the characters.  The storyline is refreshing and original.  It has just the right mixture of baseball folklore and Civil War history to satisfy both readers of historical fiction, and anyone who enjoys the sport.  But more importantly Camp Ford is a wonderfully entertaining and downright enjoyable novel.

I enjoyed this novel enough when I originally read it that it was included in my top five novels that year.  Camp Ford is a novel you should make a point to read. 

This review was originally published in slightly different form at the long ago blog Saddlebums on December 16, 2007, but since it is the season of baseball, and the current World Series is being played by the Red Sox and Cardinals, I decided to dust it off and give it new life.  Camp Ford is currently available as an ebook.

The Heavenly Van Gogh

This image is of Supergiant Star V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon).  It was taken by Hubble in 2002 when the star emitted a pulse of light or energy.  The Hubble website makes the comparison of this beautiful “light echo” to the work of Vincent Van Gogh.  The halo, or dust, is illuminated by the star, which is the red center. 

Its beautiful swirls and tidal-like movements are as vibrant as any space photograph I have ever seen.  It is something close to a magical and unbelievable view into a different time and place.  A place we can never see with our own retinas, but a place we can interpret and imagine from the lens of Hubble.  A place of imagination and opportunity.  A place for our hopes and amazements.  But more importantly a vision of the future and humanities march forward, which is summoned by our ability to capture such an image.     

The Hubble website description is here.